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Located in the heart of the nation’s fourth largest city, South Texas College of Law Houston is a private, independent institution that has earned a reputation for providing students an exceptional, relevant, practical legal education that fully prepares them for a career in the profession.

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The Fred Parks Law Library offers students access to more than 90 law-related databases; a comprehensive range of government documents; special collections, including rare books, manuscripts, and archives; and legal research guides. These resources are all designed not only to support students in the classroom, but also to better prepare them for employment after graduation.

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South Texas College of Law Houston provides students with a full range of services and opportunities to enhance their learning experience. We offer nearly 40 special-interest student organizations, technology support, academic counseling, and assistance in pursuing employment, internships, and clerkships.

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South Texas College of Law Houston is committed to helping our students maximize their potential for a successful, rewarding career. We help students to locate opportunities in private practice, public interest, government, and business; provide career counseling and job search advice; offer assistance identifying and applying for clerkships and internships; and connect students with alumni and other potential employers.

ALUMNI AND FRIENDS

More than 15,000 South Texas College of Law Houston alumni live and work across the U.S. and the globe. Every new graduate is automatically a member of the Alumni Association.
Our alumni have achieved success in private practice, the judiciary, as general counsels, and in government and public service. Additionally, we have built partnerships with friends of the law school who share our vision and seek to support our mission.

CURRENTS: JIEL is a law journal at South Texas College of Law Houston. The journal began in the early 1990s when there were few journals focused on all of the areas now considered part of international economic law:

International trade in goods and services at the multilateral, regional and unilateral level

Areas of law relating to international business transactions (dealing with the sale and distribution of goods/services; intellectual property rights and licensing of such rights; foreign direct investment (and dispute resolution connected to such investment)

International environmental law as it connects to trade and transactions

International labor law as it connects to trade and transactions

CURRENTS: JIEL was such an early entrant into this area that the field of international economic law did not yet have a name. Consequently, the journal started out as CURRENTS: Journal of International Trade Law. In 2016, as it became the journal of the law school’s Institute for International Legal Practice & National Security, the journal adopted its new name.

Now the journal has embarked on a multi-issue re-launch of the journal as it approaches 25 years of publication. As part of this re-launch, CURRENTS: JIEL would like to establish even closer connections to the global marketplace represented by the city of Houston by reaching out to the business community for the following:

Lawyers, business leaders, and economists willing to suggest ideas and speakers for a regular symposium series in the journal devoted to areas of international practice of significance to Texas, and therefore the United States (either annual or biennial)

Lawyers, business leaders, and economists willing to serve a board members for the newly reimagined journal

What can the journal and the Institute offer Houston?

A journal available on all electronic platforms – LEXIS. Westlaw, Hein Online – with an established readership

A location in downtown Houston for putting on programs (lunches, panels, conferences) related to any aspect of international trade and business under the sponsorship of STCLH and the Institute

Faculty Advisors

Professor Cherie O. Taylor is a Director of the Institute for International Legal Practice & National Security (IILP & NS) at South Texas College of Law Houston. She has developed the international economic law curriculum of the law school and teaches courses on international business transactions (International Business Transactions, Transactional Skills: International Business Transactions) and international trade (NAFTA: Trade & Transactions, World Trading Systems). Prior to joining the faculty of the law school, Professor Taylor received her JD at the University of Georgia and her LL.M in International Law at Georgetown University Law Center. She practiced law, after completing a judicial clerkship with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, with the Washington, D.C. firm of Steptoe & Johnson. At Steptoe, Professor Taylor worked for the International Trade group of the firm and focused on import relief actions, Section 301 cases, and advising clients on U.S. trade legislation, on multilateral trade issues, and on regional trade agreements. During her career at the law school, Professor Taylor has been an active member of the International Economic Law Interest Group at the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and has served both as a Vice-Chair and Chair of the interest group. Professor Taylor’s scholarship has been largely devoted to regionalism in international trade and to the work of the World Trade Organization (WTO), particularly its dispute settlement system. In recent years, Professor Taylor has devoted many of her efforts to developing skills-based curriculum on international business transactions and international arbitration.

In 1991, she joined together with Assistant Dean Elizabeth A. Dennis to start CURRENTS. Together they decided to start a journal devoted to all aspects of international economic law and began with an inaugural issue devoted to the legal issues that would come from NAFTA. CURRENTS was designed to reach law practitioners, as well as academics and students, and the journal continues that tradition as it approaches its twenty-fifth anniversary.

2019 – 2020 Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief

Managing Editor

Article & Note Editors

Project Editor

Eligibility Requirements for CURRENTS:

Good Academic Standing,

At least two (2) semesters remaining,

Completion of 20 credit hours, and

Completion of LRW I & II

To Join CURRENTS:

Students must successfully complete the write-on competition packet and be chosen for membership based on their demonstrated superior writing and editing skills. The write-on competition is held three times yearly, twice in the summer and once in the winter, with members starting on CURRENTS: JIEL in the fall and spring semesters, respectively.

Membership Requirements for CURRENTS:

Edit articles and student notes

Work collaboratively on CURRENTS EVENTS feature

Write a student Note

Notes are 30 pages in length with substantial footnotes authored by CURRENTS: JIEL students at South Texas College of Law Houston. Notes examine a timely and relevant analysis about an international economic law issue.

Submission Guidelines

Academics, practitioners, and government officials are invited to submit articles or essays for publication. CURRENTS: JIEL encourages short articles and essays, but is happy to consider for review manuscripts of any length. CURRENTS: JIEL does not accept submissions from current law students, outside of South Texas College of Law Houston.

How to Submit

CURRENTS: JIEL will accept manuscript submissions electronically via:

Expresso,

Scholastica, or

By email at Currents@stcl.edu

Submission Requirements

All submissions must be accompanied by an updated Curriculum Vitae (CV). Articles must be in Microsoft Word or Word Perfect format when submitted. CURRENTS: JIEL uses endnotes for citations. Authors are invited to submit their articles or essays with citations in footnote form.

Review of Submissions

Once a submission is received, the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board will review the submission for publication. Authors will receive an offer email with an articulated time frame.

If you have any questions regarding the submission process, please contact:

CURRENTS is the official Journal of International Economic Law at South Texas College of Law. It is published bi-annually by the law student members and Editorial Board of the Journal. CURRENTS is received by a wide range of subscribers, which include law schools, practitioners, private companies and universities in the U.S. and abroad. The full text of CURRENTS articles are available on Westlaw and Lexis.

Past Issues

Vol. XXI, No. 2

Summer 2013

The Integration of Human Rights in Bilateral and Plurilateral Free Trade Agreements: Arguments for a Coherent Relationship with Reference to the Swiss Context
Ioana Cismas

Chester James Taylor Award 2011: The Learning Curve of Sanctions — Have Three Decades of Sanctions Reform Taught Us Anything?
SaraBeth Egle

The Perils of Noble Ventures and the Value of Preserving the Distinction between a State Entity’s Acts of Commercial and Governmental Character for the Purpose of Attribution in Investment Treaty Arbitration
Andrey V. Kuznetsov

The Link Between Countervailing Duty Investigations and Non-Market Economy Status in Light of United States: Definitive Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Duties on Certain Products from China
Yaling Zhang

In Supporting the National Export Initiative, Do the Commerce Department’s Proposed Changes to Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Duty Trade Laws Truly Implement a Global Initiative or Are They an Isolated Enforcement?
Adam J. Flood

Keynote Address: The Menace of Human Trafficking in Africa and the U.S. Congressional Response through the Office of the United States Executive Director of the African Development Bank
Ambassador Cynthia Shepard Perry

Extraditions to the United States in the Face of the Death Penalty: A Decrease in the United States’ Global Economic Influence Lessens Opportunities to Change Extradition Policies
Adam Courtin

Sunlight for the Wealth of Nations: International Trade Implications in Forsaking the Unholy Trinity of Mutual Fund Governance Desecration and Administration of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
Justin Haws Riley

Opportunity Knocks—The Role of International Trade Arbitration in Reducing International Trade Barriers and Addressing Environmental Concerns
Jerry Clark

Book Review: The Power to Protect: Trade, Health, and Uncertainty in the WTO by Catherine Button
Leslie Leazer

Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Case of State Succession: The Paradigm of the 1981 Convention between Greece and the Former USSR on Judicial Assistance in Civil and Criminal Matters
Evangelos Vassilakakis and Panayiotis Yiannopoulos

Transaction Costs and Their Elevated Role in the Context of EU Expansion
Serguei A Koudriachov

The Australian Contribution to the Jurisprudence of the WTO Dispute Settlement Process
Bryan Mercurio

Development and Reformation of Regulation on Securities Investment Funds Management in China
Huachun Dong

Chester James Taylor 2003 Grand Prize Winner: A Step in the Right Direction: How to Make the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas a Cohesive Agreement that Will Better Serve Integration of Free Trade in the Western Hemisphere
Suzanne Elmilady

An Examination of the U.S.–Iraqi War’s Effect on the Global Trade & the Global Economy
Tracey A. Beecher

Trade Liberalization and the Environment: A Texas Perspective
Leslie Dye

African Union: Building a Dream to Facilitate Trade, Development and Debt Relief
Elizabeth Justice

Watching the Clothes Go Round: Combating the Effects of Money Laundering on Economic Development and International Trade
Paul Kennedy

Vol. XI, No. 2

Winter 2002

Feature Commentary:

Coming to Grips with Globalization
Ewell E. Murphy, Jr.

War by Sanctions: Are We Targeting Ourselves?
Joanmarie M. Dowling, Esq. and Mark P. Popiel, Esq.

The Professionalization Thesis: The TBR, the WTO and World Economic Integration
Eric Allen Engle

Regionalism or Globalism? The Process of Telecommunication Cooperation within the OAS and NAFTA
Chung Hung Lin

The Future of Brazilian Immigration
Myron R. Morales

The Use and Enforcement of Arbitration Agreements in U.S. Courts with a Focus on the Western Hemisphere
James J. Woodruff, II

Understanding Patents in a Post-Doha World
Nabila Ansari

A Step in the Right Direction: How to Make the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas a Cohesive Agreement that Will Better Serve Integration of Free Trade in the Western Hemisphere
Suzanne Elmilady

Fleecing the American Taxpayer: Competition Policy in the U.S. Military Household Goods Industry in Germany
Robert J. Mueller

Music on the Internet: Can the Present Laws and Treaties Protect Music Copyright in Cyberspace?
Stephen Summer

Manufacturers’ Responsibility for Harms Suffered by Victims of Counterfeiters: A Modern Elaboration of Causation Rules and Fundamental Tort Law.
Arthur Best

U.S. Export Controls on Dual-Use Goods and Technologies: Is the High Tech Industry Suffering?
R. Aylan Broadbent

Criminalization of Trade Secret Theft: On the Second Anniversary of the Economic Espionage Act
John R. Bauer & Joseph F. Savage, Jr.

Exporation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act-Are We Doing Enough to Ensure Our Goal of Global Compliance With Its Content?
Brooks Ware

Trademark Enforcement in Mexico
Hedwig A. Lindner López

Vol. VII, No. 2

Winter 1998

International Electronic Commerce: Some Legal Aspects
Fernando Piera

The Euro: A Trojan Horse for Europe or a Real Rival to the U.S. Dollar?
Bridgett Overlease

What Might the Impact of the Euro be on Latin America’s Trade and Finance Markets
Ricardo J. Cata

How the Western Hemisphere will be Won!
Matthew Barrier

Implementation of the Santiago Summit Plan of Action in the Field: A Look at USAID’s Programs in Education, Democracy, Trade Integration, Economic Growth, and Poverty Reduction in Guatemala
Steven E. Hendrix

The Evolution of Commercial and Insurance Law in Post-Cold War Russia
John Welch

Vol. VII, No. 1

Summer 1998

The Spiral of Time: A Historical Perspective on International Law Protection for Transnational Investment in the Twenty-first Century
Ewell E. Murphy, Jr.

International Antitrust: A Comparison of the European Union and the United States
Patrick B. Larkin

The Brave New Cuba
Terry O’Neill

Italian Telecommunications: On Line with Europe
David M. Dobson and Marcantonio Pinci

The Regulatory Implications of International Telecommunications Liberalization: New Roles for the WTO and ITU
Mark A. Crichton